Their new Sin of the day is not just soft toilet paper, it is a guilt issue to be atoned for because miserable Humans are not only existing on Gaia's Earth but they are having the brazenness to freely cut Her trees. People who believe this crap are literally insane. Too bad they lost the anchor of traditional Christianity and are left as utter fools without a clue to what is real and what is false.

What utter bullshit; tree farms are used for this kind of thing. People aren't cutting down "old growth" forests (which is largely a myth anyway) to make paper. High quality paper comes from fast growing trees bred to be high in just the right pulp content.

I am extremely skeptical of the claim that old growth forest is used for toilet paper. Like Joe, I'm fairly certain that most paper comes out of tree farms. Are environmentalists aware that trees are farmed? Notice how this article constantly blurs the distinction between farmed trees and old growth forest trees.

If you want more trees, don't recycle paper. Then more farmland will be used to farm trees. If someone has the land and can't make money farming trees, they're going to farm something else, not leave the land to become some sort of pristine eco-paradise.

"It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper.

Yep. Unbelievable.

I don't believe it. I'm from the paper making region of central Wisconsin, and where the trees come from is on display for all to see. Birch and aspen. Fast growing species taken from land that has been cut over more than once already. The Environs are trying to push recycled paper, which is a religion for them, by making false claims.

Well, double-ply Scotts is my preference. That quilted, fluffy stuff is just uneconomical overkill. I can't understand why people buy it. And I hate Charmin. I don't want to know about bears and their klingons. TMI.

Original Mike, you might look at the article. It's a paper executive saying it:

"At what price softness?" said Tim Spring, chief executive of Marcal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper. "Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big [marketing] machine has told me that softness is important?" .

Fistly, as a Canadian I want to say that we can manage our own forests without the guidance of some environmentalist from New Jersey, thank you very much. .

Fistly? Sure you're not on the wrong board?

I agree, though. Fuck new Jersey.

Oh, wait. What about an environmentalist from Canada? From the article you didn't read:

"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests. He said real change will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how that would be okay."

The environmental group had spent 4 1/2 years attacking Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle toilet paper, for getting wood from old-growth forests in Canada. But the group said it is calling off the "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.

By 2011, the company said, 40 percent of the fiber in all its tissue products will come from recycled paper or sustainable forests. .

But for the "at home" market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally "virgin" fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc.

Big tissue makers say they've tried to make their products as green as possible, including by buying more wood pulp from forest operations certified as sustainable.

But despite environmentalists' concerns, they say customers are unwavering in their desire for the softest paper possible.

People like "virgin" fiber. Okay. Companies say they've been getting more from sustainable forests. Okay. Then there's a "despite" out of no where that doesn't make any sense in context and the first fact is basically restated again.

The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper -- in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts -- are shorter. The web often is rougher.

Fibers from old trees are longer. Okay. Fibers from recycled paper are shorter. Okay. What about fibers of regular farm trees? Oh right, they aren't mentioned at all because that would break the narrative.

m00se said... I'm no Gaia worshipper by any stretch of the imagination, but I do hate waste. Using old growth trees for toilet paper is beyond silly. Its stupid.

An "old growth tree" is no more sacred than a "new growth tree". I mean, by all means do not repeat the mistake we made of cutting down every pocket of old growth timber up to the West Coast....

But guess what??? If we had nothing but "Old Growth Redwoods" coast to coast, 500 million acres of the stuff, we'd figure out ways to USE a lot of it.

That is what Canada and Russia have with Boreal forests, except its in the billion acre range. And cutting part of it actually BOOSTS wildlife population diversity, because number and diversity of species is severly stunted when all you have are scrub, low nutrition value fir and spruce trees for hundreds of kilometers around any given point.

Cutting it is no different than cutting Southern US pulpwood or harvesting corn. Except it grows 3 times slower than wood in warmer latitudes.

Basically, you are talking about people mentally conditioned to worship "old growth" flora despite the lack of fauna if "old growth" of one species is all you have for thousands of square miles in an ecosystem. Menatlly conditioned by people who teach other people there is no difference between Old Growth Giant Sequioas on a few remaining sqaure miles of land and the whole of the Baja interor filled with "old growth desert scrub" or outside boreal forests, the "sacredness" of 14 million acres of "old growth Arctic mosquito-breeding tundra".

The last thing environmentalists know anything about is the environment. All they do know is how to get hysterical at the application of wants, needs, desires as a function of commerce, income, profit, and capitalism and their outright hatred of all of it for the sake of a set of religious beliefs that presumes that the environment or namely the earth is a living, breathing, thinking entity. Gaiaists/environmentalists are morons.

Enviros suggesting we not shit all over our natural heritage and conserve some for next generation = bad, bad, bad.

Enviros are free to suggest anything they wish, and I will give them a fair hearing. But the second they presume to use the government to boss me around at the point of a gun, I'll refuse to cooperate on general principle.

Homework Assignment for this Weekend: Look in the cupboards of your Obama friendly friends. If they have anything other than 1-ply toilet paper then use shaving creme to write a large "H" on their bathroom mirror ... H for Hypocrite!!!

"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests."

"Boreal forest" does not mean "old growth forest". It's dishonest to imply otherwise. Language is everything with such discussions. We're talking about tree crop-land that happens to be in the boreal region. 60% of Canada's land is in the boreal region.

What does "old growth" mean? Not logged in 40 years? 100? Never? American aboriginal populations logged and they've been here a long time. We don't seem to be discussing "old growth" in any case but "boreal"... a term few here seem to understand.

Eco-nuts are not going to make the American public reach into their rears after they do their business. It simply is not going to happen... so wake up nutters.